TiVo and Google Team Up TiVo, Google, annouce partnership to get TV advertsing metrics

Since the popularity of DVR services (like TiVo) have spread, previous
forms of TVย advertisingย metrics (like the Nielsen ratings) have become
somewhat worthless as people will skipย commercials. Now, Google is
teaming up with TiVo to get access to exclusive data that TiVo has never
shared with an outside company before.
Some examples of the data that TiVo will share with the search giant are
things like 'second-by-second viewing data' and what viewers are
fast-forwarding through whatย commercials. Data itself on the viewers
(one assumes demographic data on the viewer, IE: White male, 25 years
old) will also be sent to Google.
The point of this whole venture is for Google to get a better
understanding of how many people actually watched the ad, and now much
theย advertiserย should pay for it. No financial terms of the
TiVo-Google partnership wereย announced, but I would expect that Google
was paying top-dollar for it, since a TiVo vice president told Variety
Magazine that the information was 'highly valuable'.
Google, which dominated the web with its AdWords advertising business,
recently expanded into television with Google TV. American
TVย corporationย giant NBC Unversial has publicly expressed interest in
Google TV. NBC Unversial's family of networks includes over 70 TV
channels worldwide.